Brother Dusty Feet Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. Three Adventurers Set Out

  2. The Joyous Company

  3. The True and Noble History of St George

  4. The Piper

  5. Seisin

  6. Pan and the Star

  7. Argos

  8. The Mist Rises

  9. The Fine Gentleman

  10. St George Again, and a Green Doublet

  11. Uncle Jacob

  12. White Hart Forest

  13. The Parting of the Ways

  14. The Foot of the Rainbow

  Copyright

  BROTHER

  DUSTY-FEET

  Rosemary Sutcliff

  FOR UNCLE HAROLD

  with my love

  1

  Three Adventurers Set Out

  The moment before it happened, Argos had been following obediently at Hugh Copplestone’s heels; but then he saw the new ducklings. Golden, cheeping ducklings, scurrying all about the yard, while their comfortable brown hen-mother took a dust-bath in the corner by the big shippon. Argos was very nearly a deerhound, only his brindled black-and-amber coat was long and silky like a collie’s. He had wallflower-brown eyes and a warm heart, and he loved all small scurrying things. So the moment he saw the ducklings he ambled over to blow at them affectionately; but the ducklings did not understand that it was affection, and they were very frightened. Hugh, who was on his way to water the calves, was carrying two pails on a yoke much too big for him, and did not notice what was happening until the ducklings scattered in all directions, cheeping and diving under anything that looked as if it might give them shelter from the Dreadful Monster, and the hen arose from her dust-bath with a wild squawk and flew clucking at the top of her voice to defend her adopted family.

  ‘Argos!’ cried Hugh frantically, setting down the pails with a clatter. ‘Argos! Come here! Oh, hen, do stop making that noise!’

  But it was too late. A window under the farmhouse eaves was flung open, and a scolding voice shrilled down at him. ‘Take that brute into the cart-shed and tie him up. I saw him trying to kill the ducklings, and a poultry-killer in this farm is a thing I will not have!’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t. Really he wasn’t, Aunt Alison!’ protested Hugh, gazing up at her beseechingly. ‘He likes ducklings; it was only that they didn’t understand.’

  ‘Likes ducklings! I don’t doubt he likes ducklings!’ snapped Aunt Alison. ‘You take that brute into the cart-shed, and I’ll come and attend to him later. Yiss!’ And her head disappeared and the window banged shut.

  Hugh knew what she meant by ‘attending’ to Argos, and so did Argos, and his ears and tail drooped miserably as he turned to follow his master.

  The cart-shed was dim and quiet, full of shadows through which the May-time sunshine slanted down like a golden sword from a hole high up in the wall. There was no cart there now, because Uncle Jacob had taken it to help a friend who was moving farms – just the empty dimness and the golden sword of sunshine. Hugh tied Argos up to a ring in the wall with a piece of wagon rope; then he sat down on his heels and put his arms round the dog’s soft neck, and held him tight; tight, as though he was desperately afraid they might be parted.

  ‘Oh, Argos,’ he whispered, ‘you must learn not to do things like that. Now she’s going to beat you again.’

  Argos turned his head as well as he could and kissed his master’s chin with a warm, loving tongue. He knew he was going to be beaten again, but he had been beaten so often that he was quite used to it, and Aunt Alison’s shrill voice hurt him much more than the whiplash; and he tried to explain this to Hugh. But Hugh would not be comforted, and only hugged him the closer, while one tear trickled down his nose.

  Hugh’s mother had died when he was so little that he could not remember her at all, though his father had often and often told him about her, and how kind she was, and how she loved flowers, especially periwinkle. Hugh’s father had been Vicar of a small, bleak Cornish village, and they had been very poor; but they had been very comfortable, and happy too, with a plot of periwinkle in the garden and an old woman called Hepzibah who came in by the day to look after them. But when Hugh was eight years old his father had died too, and he had had to come and live with Uncle Jacob, who was his mother’s brother (though it was hard to believe that, because he was so different), and Aunt Alison, who was Uncle Jacob’s wife. And Argos, who was a puppy then, had come with him. Uncle Jacob would have been fairly kind to them if he dared, but Aunt Alison grudged them the space they slept in and the food they ate – though Hugh worked hard enough to earn it – and she was very unkind to them. And as Uncle Jacob always did what she wanted, because she made him so uncomfortable if he did not, he was unkind to them too. Hugh would not have minded so much for himself, but very soon after he came to live in the big farmhouse, Aunt Alison had discovered that she could hurt him more by beating Argos than she could by beating him; so she had beaten Argos very often ever since, even more often than she beat Hugh, that is. She was not a nice woman.

  ‘I must go now,’ whispered Hugh. ‘I must go and finish watering the calves, or she’ll be even more angry. Oh, if only it was just you and me alone to ourselves in all the world!’ And he rubbed his face against Argos’s neck, and got up. At the opening of the cart-shed he looked back, and saw the great dog sitting up and looking after him. ‘Good night, old Argos,’ he said, and Argos thumped his plumy tail on the ground and whined softly in his throat. It hurt Hugh dreadfully to leave him there, but he turned away at last and set off to water the calves before going in to his supper.

  Aunt Alison was alone in the big farm kitchen when he went timidly in, for it was May Fair over at Torrington, and Jenny the farm maid and all the farm hands except old Ammiel the shepherd were out enjoying themselves. Aunt Alison had had to let them go and enjoy themselves because of what the village would say if she did not, otherwise she would not have dreamed of it. She was taking pies out of the bake-oven (she always baked when Jenny was out, because it made her feel ill-used, which was what she liked), and her face was very red, partly because of the oven and partly because she was in a bad temper.

  ‘I suppose you’ve forgotten to water the calves,’ she said accusingly.

  Hugh said, ‘No, Aunt Alison. I’ve just done it.’

  ‘Have you tied up that brute of yours?’

  Hugh nodded miserably; and Aunt Alison ladled some broth from an iron crock into a bowl and pushed it across the table to him, with a hunch of bread.

  ‘There’s your supper,’ she snapped, ‘and ’tis little enough you do to earn it.’

  ‘I do work hard, please, Aunt,’ said Hugh.

  But Aunt Alison put her hands on her hips and screwed up her face and said, ‘Work? Aye, you work, because I see that you do. You wouldn’t do a hand’s turn else, I’ll be bound – and me working my fingers to the bone while everyone goes gallivanting off enjoying themselves.’

  Her voice grew shriller and more aggrieved every moment. ‘Yiss, and I’ll tell you another thing, my beauty – ’tis a fine affair that your uncle and I should have to feed and clothe and shelter the likes of you, because that zany father of yours was so busy reading books he couldn’t even provide for his own flesh and blood.’

  Hugh pushed away his broth-bowl and stood up to her with his hands clenched and his face nearly as red as hers. ‘Don’t you dare say things like that about my father,’ he said, almost choking in his fury. ‘You’re a beastly woman, and I hate you!’

  There was an awful silence.

  Hugh had never spoken even a little bit rudely to Aunt Alison before, and he couldn’t quite believe that he had done it now. And just for a moment Aunt Alison didn’
t seem to believe it either; then her eyes began to glitter like glass in her red face, and she said in a triumphant and spiteful rush, ‘You wicked, ungrateful varmint! I’ve fed and housed you and that dog of yours for close on three years, and this is what I get for all my goodness. Not that it isn’t what I expected, for well I know the wicked ways of the world, and thank Heaven I can do my duty and look for no gratitude! Yiss, but ’tisn’t my duty to feed and shelter that dog, and I’ll not do it another day.’

  Hugh gave a frightened gasp, and his sudden bright rage went out as though somebody had thrown cold water over it.

  Aunt Alison heard the gasp, and her face had a pleased sort of look. ‘He’s no good for the sheep, and he eats more than either of the other dogs,’ she said. ‘I’ll have him knocked on the head tomorrow. Yiss!’

  ‘No!’ cried Hugh. ‘Oh no, Aunt Alison. He’ll learn to be a sheep-dog, really he will. I’ll teach him. Please—’

  ‘If ’twasn’t that all the men are out except Ammiel, and him a soft-hearted zany, I’d have it done tonight,’ said Aunt Alison. Then she stamped her foot and pointed to the stairs. ‘Oh, get along to bed; I’m sick of the sight of you.’

  For a long moment Hugh stood quite still, staring at her red, triumphant face, and feeling very sick. Then he turned away without a word, and stumbled off upstairs, up and up to his garret high under the eaves. And there he flung himself down on the bed, not crying – it was too bad for that – just lying quite still with his head in his arms, while something deep down inside him whispered over and over again, ‘Good-bye, old Argos, good-bye.’

  He lay there for a long time, so long that it grew dusk all round him, and the dusk deepened to dark, and a bright star hung low out of the sky beyond his little window. And then, quite suddenly, he knew what he must do; and it was so simple that he could not imagine why he had not thought of it before. He must take Argos away tonight! They would run away together, and make their fortunes; they would find some place where Aunt Alison could not reach them and they would be happy.

  Hugh got up off the bed, and thought about making preparations; but really there were none to make. He had a spare pair of shoes and a good shirt for Sundays, but he did not like to take them, lest Aunt Alison should call it stealing; and that only left the pot of periwinkle on the windowsill. It was a little bit of the periwinkle patch at home, which he had brought with him when he came to live here, and so it was his, and he could take it with him, and nobody could call it stealing; but it did not need to be packed or got ready in any way. So he simply sat down on the rush stool under the window, and waited.

  Aunt Alison had not yet come to bed in the room below, and the others were not home from the Fair; so Hugh knew that it would not be safe to start out for a long while yet, and while he waited he began to make plans. It was a very quiet night, with hardly a breath of wind stirring; only the owls cried softly in the dark woods along the valley, and somewhere a dog-fox barked in the distance, and somehow the quietness helped him with his planning.

  Should he go back to Cornwall, to the little bleak village that had been home before his father died? No, the people there were all so poor that none of them would be able to give him work. Well, then, should he wait in Bideford till daylight came, and wander down along the Quay where the great ships lay, and try to get taken on as cabin-boy aboard one of them, and see the Glories of Cathay or sail the golden waters of the Spanish Main? They would probably take him, because he was nearly eleven and tall for his age; but they certainly would not take Argos, so that was no good either. Then he had a great and glorious idea that was just as simple as the first one had been. They would go to Oxford!

  Hugh’s father had often told him about Oxford, where he had been servitor to someone called Anthony Heritage, at Oriel College. Being a servitor meant living with a friend who was richer than yourself, and sharing his schooling and his food, and in return for that, cleaning his boots and his room and carrying his books for him. That was the way in which most people who had not much money went to Oxford – or to Cambridge, for that matter. Well, so Hugh’s father had gone to Oxford, and he had meant that Hugh should go too. ‘I don’t quite know how we’ll manage it,’ he had said, looking slightly bothered, ‘because we don’t know anyone who wants a servitor; but we’re sure to find a way somehow, when you are thirteen or so.’ (People went to the Universities much younger in the days of Queen Elizabeth than they do now.) And he told Hugh about Anthony Heritage, who hated learning and was generally in trouble with the authorities; and about the Bocardo Prison, where evil-minded students who got into debt and pawned their friends’ Sunday jerkins were locked up, and had to be fed from outside, because Bocardo did not provide meals. About the Crosse Inn, where strolling players acted their plays from time to time; and about the wonderful lectures of Master Thomas Bodley, and about the glories of the New Learning.

  You see, until Henry VII was King of England, very few people except the clergy had any learning at all, and what books there were, were mostly in Latin, and people were not supposed to think much for themselves, in case thinking made them stop believing in the Saints and being good. But in some countries, people were already beginning to make new discoveries, and learn what they wanted to learn, and think for themselves about the things they learned and discovered. All this was called the New Learning, and little by little it started to spread into England, and the English people began to study all sorts of exciting subjects, and to think long thoughts for themselves. Books began to be printed in English so that everyone could read them, and other people began to learn Greek so that they could read some of the most wonderful books in the world, in the language in which they were written. It was all a kind of great adventure, like a voyage of discovery.

  Hugh’s father had told him all about that; and he had told him, too, about the towers and spires of Oxford rising from a golden haze on fine summer mornings, with Magdalen Tower rising above them all, so beautiful that it was like an archangel standing with folded wings to guard the way into the City; and how the first time he ever saw Magdalen Tower there was a rainbow touching its pinnacles. He had told Hugh about that so many times that whenever he thought about Oxford – which was very often indeed – he saw Magdalen Tower standing a-tiptoe to join hands with the rainbow.

  So he would walk towards Oxford, and perhaps good fortune would meet him on the road, and if it did not, surely when he got there he would find someone who wanted a boy to tend their garden or help them keep their shop; and perhaps as time went on he would be able to get a little learning too. It would not be the same as going to Oriel, as his father had done, but it would be much better than nothing; and anyway, he and Argos would be together, and Argos would be safe from Aunt Alison.

  Presently, as he sat waiting, he heard the farm people come home from the Fair, and the men clattering away to their sleeping quarters above the stables, and Aunt Alison scolding somebody. Then Jenny the farm maid came upstairs to the little garret next to his, and soon after that Aunt Alison came up to bed too. Hugh sat quite still on his stool, shivering a little, but not with cold, for it was not at all a cold night, listening to Jenny moving about on the other side of his wall and Aunt Alison thumping to bed in a bad temper in the room below. Soon everything was quiet again, but still he waited. He must give them all time to be sound asleep before he risked creeping downstairs. The night seemed more silent than ever; even the fox had stopped barking; only the owls cried in the darkness. Then there began to be another sound that came and went, and came and went: a kind of drone with a whistle at the end of it. Aunt Alison was asleep and snoring.

  Hugh took off his shoes and got up very quietly, collected the pot of periwinkle, and stole across to the door. The hinges were rusty and squeaked as the door moved, so that he had to open it very slowly, inch by inch, until it was wide enough for him to squeeze through, and when he let it go the latch fell with a little ill-natured clatter that seemed loud enough to wake even the farm hands over the stab
les. He waited for a moment, holding his breath, but it could not have been as loud as all that, because there was no sound from the next-door garret, and down below Aunt Alison went on snoring. So he slipped out into the main loft. He did not dare to close the door behind him, lest it should make another noise, but luckily there was no wind to make it slam, and so he left it as it was.

  He had to make two journeys down the ladder, because in those days shoes had no laces, and so you could not hang them round your neck, and you cannot climb down a ladder with both hands full – at least, not if you have to be quiet. So he took his shoes down first, and then went back for the pot of periwinkle, and brought that down too. He crept past Aunt Alison’s door with the back of his neck prickling, and on down the stairs. The stair-well was pitchy dark, and he was terrified all the way down that he would stumble and drop his shoes, or miscount and tread on the fourth stair from the bottom, which always creaked loudly if trodden on. Once Aunt Alison stopped snoring, and he froze like a little wild thing when it scents danger, waiting for the bedroom door to fly open and Aunt Alison to appear at the stairhead with a rushlight in her hand and her eyes glittering and her head tied up in the huge white coif she always wore at night. But the door did not open, and the snoring began again, and after a moment Hugh crept on once more, down and down until he arrived safely in the kitchen.

  The fire had been banked for the night, and the shutters were closed, so the kitchen was as black-dark as the stairs had been, but Hugh found his way to the door without falling over anything, and lifted the heavy bar which Aunt Alison had put in place because Uncle Jacob was not coming back until tomorrow, and slipped out, closing the door very gently after him. He was free!

  But he had forgotten about the two sheep-dogs, who were always loose at night, and the next moment they came baying and snarling round the corner of the house as though they meant to alarm the whole parish and tear him to pieces! Hugh’s inside gave a sickening lurch, and he wanted desperately to run, but that would be no good, because they would give chase and make more noise than ever. So he stood his ground and spoke to them quietly, holding out his hands for them to smell as they came up. ‘It’s only me, Ship; it’s me, Lusty, only me.’ And the moment they heard his voice they stopped barking, and sniffed at his fists in a friendly way, wagging their tails. ‘Go to bed!’ whispered Hugh; and they padded off obediently into the darkness. But their barking had roused Aunt Alison, and the next instant her window rattled open, and Hugh knew that she was leaning out to find what the noise had been about. He crouched in the thick shadow against the house wall, not daring to breathe, and with his heart thudding away right up in his throat, so loud that he was sure she must hear it. But after what seemed a long while, she said, ‘Confound those dogs!’ and shut the window with a cross little slam.